Johannes Brahms’s Hungarian Dances are some of the most popular pieces in the art music repertory, yet they have elicited little scholarly inquiry. Existing writings generally focus on the musical sources these pieces are based on. The Dances include Brahms’s most consistent use of the style hongrois , a type of musical exoticism used to recall Gypsy performances and to evoke emotions associated with them. To date, there has been no systematic analysis of the Dances and their style hongrois traits. Furthermore, the writings that do include some discussion of the Dances’ style hongrois features do not relate these characteristics to the nineteenth-century Gypsy stereotype. In the course of this document, I systematically analyze the Dances’ style hongrois features and relate them to attributes of the Gypsy stereotype. I show how Brahms’s use of the style hongrois in his Hungarian Dances is a construction of the Gypsy “Other” and a recipe that can be broken down into specific musical ingredients.
This document includes an introduction to musical exoticism with a focus on the style hongrois , a detailed discussion of the facets of the nineteenth-century Gypsy stereotype, information on Brahms’s connection to Hungarian music and a background for his Hungarian Dances , and a categorization of style hongrois traits with examples from Hungarian folk and popular music. Included is an analysis of each Hungarian Dance, focusing on style hongrois characteristics and their connections to the Gypsy stereotype. Through this connection, each Hungarian Dance emerges as a facet of this complex stereotype.
A brief discussion of Brahms’s other works in the style reveals that none of them present such a consistent use of the style hongrois as the Hungarian Dances , making the latter a unique appearance in his output. Through their abundant style hongrois traits, the Hungarian Dances clearly show Brahms’s musical construction of the Gypsy “Other,” based on this author’s five main categories of the Gypsy stereotype: 1) the Gypsies’ sensual, fascinating manner; 2) their wildly emotional behavior; 3) their love of freedom and fierce independence; 4) their alleged immoral, criminal, even subhuman behavior; and 5) their “inborn,” bountiful musical talent.